Nav 5.2: Examining party political landscapes

To examine the party political landscape in the different member states and find out to what extent parties differ on their views regarding European integration.

To familiarize yourself with the EUprofiler, a Voting Advice Application for EP elections.

Introduction

In chapter 5 we show that EP elections are taking place within the national political contexts of the member states. Hence, the party political landscape of each of the member states differs considerably. In this exercise you will examine the positions of parties in the member states by using the EU profiler website. This is a so-called Voting Advice Application (VAA) which helps citizens find out which party best matches their political viewpoints.

Select a member state that interests you. Note that you can pick any member state as the program has an English version for every country.

In order to get a visualization of the party political landscape, please complete the questionnaire and give answers to the 30 questions. (You can skip the pages that ask you to rank issues and indicate the likelihood that you will vote for certain parties)

After having finished this you will be presented with the political landscape of the member state. By clicking ‘analyze’ and ‘parties in Europe” you can display the positions of parties in different countries as well as all parties in all member states.

Questions

Summarize the party political landscape of the country and pay attention to the positioning of the parties on both the socio-economic left-right dimension as well as on the pro- and anti-EU dimension.

Is there a relation between the position of parties on the left – right dimension and the pro- and anti EU dimension? What relation is it?

You can analyze the position of parties in other member states, by selecting the ‘Parties in Europe box.’ Do you see other patterns in other countries and can you explain them?